Tens of thousands of strictly Orthodox Jews marched in Jerusalem today against the proposed integration of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi girls at a religious school.

Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and Sephardi children must be educated together, and dozens of parents of girls at a school in the West Bank settlement of Emanuel face up to two weeks in jail.

The parents of Ashkenazi children have demanded the other children are educated separately - claiming they do not believe them to be observant enough.

Attempts at mediation have failed so far to prevent another round of Shabbat protests in Jerusalem, this time over a high-tech factory working seven days a week.

The Intel plant in Jerusalem’s Har Hotzvim business park has carried out limited work on Shabbat for over three decades. The start of a new manufacturing process, which will greatly increase the work taking place on Shabbat, had sparked calls for renewed protests. It has been two months since the previous Shabbat protests against an open municipal car park petered out.

The mother accused of starving her three-year-old son in the row which sparked the Jerusalem Charedi riots is to be charged with abuse.

Jerusalem State Prosecutor Moshe Lador is said to have been briefed on the case at the weekend and several counts are to be filed with the Jerusalem District Court after a psychiatric evaluation found that she was fit to stand trial.

The strictly Orthodox mother, who has been under house arrest for the past week, has not been allowed to see her son, who was recently released from hospital, but has been in contact with her other children.

A woman is caught on tape detaching the feeding tube from her starving three-year-old in Hadassah Hospital, after years of bringing the child in with unexplained medical conditions and bodily injuries. She is arrested by authorities for child endangerment and jailed. In response, her community backs her up, burns property and assaults police and social workers.

This story makes no sense until you add that the woman is Charedi, a member of Neturei Karta sect in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim.

In Jerusalem, Charedi riots are as much part of the summer as chamsin and ice cream.

Past pretexts have included adverts with pictures of immodestly dressed women displayed at bus stops; a Gay Pride march; and the demand to close the Bar-Ilan road on Shabbat.

This year, there were two triggers. First, the opening of a municipal-owned car park on Shabbat, then, last week, the tragic case of a strictly Orthodox mother who has been accused of starving one of her children almost to death.

The grandmother of a three-year-old boy allegedly starved by his mother in Jerusalem until he weighed just 14 lb has said she is standing by her daughter-in-law, whose arrest has sparked rioting by some of the city’s strictly Orthodox factions.

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is a member of the strictly Orthodox community in Stamford Hill, north London.

“I’m giving my daughter-in-law my full support for everything. She’s a wonderful woman. She’s never had a personal problem,” the 50-year-old said.